Sunday!

You know that thing where you have been binge-watching a show with a significant other and then they go off to Canada right in the middle of the season?

Yeah. Jeez.

Anyway, after getting up at 3:30 AM and then driving to the airport, I came home and fell back asleep and then woke to realize that several of the shows that I now had time to catch up on were shows that I watched with Maribou.

So maybe I’ll watch the stack of Jason Statham/Liam Neeson movies that have piled up in the “to watch later” corner. I’ve got Homefront (starring Jason Statham (AND WRITTEN BY SYLVESTER FREAKING STALLONE[/efn_note] and Non-Stop (starring Liam Neeson) and we’ll see how today plays out. Now that I can’t watch Person of Interest until she gets back.

So… what are you reading and/or watching?

(Photo is “Movie Night“, taken by Ginny, used under a creative commons license.)

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Jaybird is Birdmojo on Xbox Live and Jaybirdmojo on Playstation's network. He's been playing consoles since the Atari 2600 and it was Zork that taught him how to touch-type. If you've got a song for Wednesday, a commercial for Saturday, a recommendation for Tuesday, an essay for Monday, or, heck, just a handful a questions, fire off an email to AskJaybird-at-gmail.com

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I ran across a documentary/reality show called Edge of Alaska (or something like that), from which I had two takeaways:

1) Unsurprisingly, the people of the Alaska town value their independence a great deal. It’s hard not to admire the extent to which they go to live outside of society. 2) They are clearly insane. In an episode I saw their dog had been killed by a pack of wolves. I’m sitting there saying “People! You don’t have to live this way!”

(It should be said that by Alaska geography, the town its from isn’t even that remote. The lack of infrastructure makes adds distance, though, and by rest of the US standards a two day drive to civilization is pretty crazy.)

Now that I have DirecTV, I’ve been able to channel surf for the first time in a few years.

It’s just amazing to me how many TV shows there are right now. I was fiddling with my remote last night and ran across one on Applause called Rogue, which had some familiar faces. And looks kind of good! But I’d never heard of it despite it having Toby Ziegler and Mr Texas in it.

I also saw a couple of Arena Football games (or parts of them) while teaching my phone the ways of DirecTV.

I finished Currents of Space (which was good!), and am now listening to the Revolutions podcast on the English Civil War. Thus far, everyone involved seems to be a moron. Oliver Cromwell is just now becoming a major player, though.Report

Well you truly understand Alaska then. Independent in often oddly defined ways and generally craaaazzzyyy. Often amusing or interesting crazy. Other times dangerous and scary. And very often sure their unique brand of crazy makes them a better kind of person. The more amusing people know they are way out there and don’t blame society for not bending to their whims.Report

Weird thing that happened: I went to the used bookstore yesterday, hoping to find a particular book, which I didn’t, so I was just looking around trying to think of something I might want to read this week. Was looking at Graham Green (I bought Dr Fischer of Geneva, which I’ve never read) when I noticed Grass’ Cat and Mouse out of the corner of my eye. So I picked it up, opened it, and immediately realized that it was the copy of Cat and Mouse that I had sold to the same store, though at another location, at least 10 years ago.

Anyway, now reading: Cat and Mouse by Günter Grass and Dr Fischer of Geneva by Graham Green.Report

It's funny how browsers I think are a thing (specifically Vivaldi and Brave) don't even register on this list. Goes to show my techie bubble.

Browsers used to have better names. Netscape was brilliant. What the heck is a Firefox? (It's "Firebird" with IP considerations is what it is.) Chrome? Edge? Edge? Come on.

It's amazing how quickly Chrome accomplished what Firefox never did. It just goes to show the power of corporate muscle. When Google announced they were creating a browser I thought it was kind of dumb. I was wrong.

People say Firefox is better than Chrome now but I just can't get into the groove of it. Chrome doesn't work right on one of my computers and I use Firefox on it. it's passable, but I wish Chrome worked on it.

With Internet Explorer being replaced by Edge and Edge being Chrome-based, that means may be looking at 3 of the top 5 and 85% of desktop browsing occurring through Chromium browsers. That's concerning.

The ship's presence, he speculated, might have been related to the testing of a nuclear-powered cruise missile.

Did Trump tweet anything about this, you ask?

The United States is learning much from the failed missile explosion in Russia. We have similar, though more advanced, technology. The Russian “Skyfall” explosion has people worried about the air around the facility, and far beyond. Not good!

As some of you know, I lost my father two weeks ago. My mother called me that Friday afternoon and said, in not such direct words, that “you better try to get up here if you can.”

I did, but I was too late. But in the aftermath of it, it was good to be there. My mother and I ate together for two weeks (my brother and his family are coming in later, such are the vagaries of scheduling bereavement leave in a government agency). We cooked some favorite things. My mom roasted a chicken and then laughed ruefully and said “I guess it’ll be harder to use a whole one up now” and the day after that, we made a favorite chicken enchilada recipe given us by a former minister of her church who had lived in the Southwest. And she baked a favorite cake of ours (my father was diabetic and we had to be careful about sweets in the house, and also baking was hard while he was so unwell). I think it helped, maybe?

There’s a German word, Kummerspeck, which literally means “Grief-bacon” and is used to refer to the weight you put on while grieving. I had scoffed at that before because the more minor griefs (eg., breakups) I had suffered made me NOT want to eat…..but I know I’ve put on a couple pounds in the last two weeks and will have to explain to my doctor when I go in for my checkup on Tuesday….

And people brought in food – lasagna, and bread, and other things.

And we went out to eat lunch a couple times; before my father’s health failed so much going out to restaurants was a favorite thing and my mom hadn’t been able to do it, really, for six months or more while he was needing her care.

When I spoke to her today after I got home, she noted that even though she had told the ‘church ladies’ who do bereavement lunches she didn’t want them to go to the trouble for the memorial service this fall (we have some people with some specific dietary concerns coming), someone did call her back and suggest a dessert-and-coffee reception before the service and I urged her to have them do that – I have fixed things many times for funeral lunches at my own church and it feels very much like it’s one kindness I can do for the family, and having a piece of cake or a few cookies may make small talk easier in a time when it’s going to be hard.

I admit I always rolled my eyes over the “how to relate to your weird dumb relative who isn’t like you” pieces, or, worse, the “you should refuse to spend time with them or try to harangue them into your viewpoint over the Thanksgiving table” pieces, because my family has a lot of….different…..people in it, and we’ve always managed. You talk about other stuff, that’s all. You talk about how a favorite team is doing or the funny things someone’s kids are doing or you share memories….

Jeffrey Epstein, the millionaire financier and accused sex trafficker, is dead by suicide, according to three officials familiar with the matter.

The officials told NBC News he was found at 7:30 a.m. ET at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York and that he hanged himself.

Epstein accuser claims she was ordered to have sex with prominent men

He was transported Saturday morning from the Metropolitan Correctional Center to a hospital in Lower Manhattan. Upon arrival, he was in cardiac arrest, people familiar with the matter say.

Epstein, 66, was being held on federal sex trafficking charges.

He was arrested July 6 in Teterboro, New Jersey, as he returned from Paris on a private jet.

He had pleaded not guilty and was denied bail.

The indictment on his case showed that he sought out minors, some as young as 14, from at least 2002 through 2005 and paying them hundreds of dollars in cash for sex at either his Manhattan townhouse or his estate in Palm Beach, Florida, federal prosecutors revealed last month.

Epstein was charged with one count of sex trafficking conspiracy and one count of sex trafficking. He faced up to 45 years in prison if found guilty.